After You Were Gone

by Alexis Harrington

  She sat in her desk chair and motioned him to pull up the other one that she’d put by a door set on top of cinder blocks that she was using as a table. He gave her a hesitant look, as if he were expecting bad news or an ass-chewing. “What? What did I do now?”

  She smiled ruefully. “Nothing.” She took a deep breath. “A few days ago, we sat here and you asked me if I knew anything about the feud between our families. I really didn’t.”

  He nodded with obvious caution.

  “I learned something that you’ll want to know. I was digging through The Tomb and I found an old journal that belonged to my mother.” She went on to explain what she’d discovered.

  “They dated the same woman? Really?”

  “Yep.”

  “That doesn’t sound like a reason for something that has lasted this long,” he said, shaking his head. “This seems like the kind of thing we should be discussing over drinks.”

  “But we’re here now.” She took another deep breath. “There’s more, and this is, well, pretty strange. Much more for me than for you. That baby the woman had—it was Cade.”

  His eyebrows flew up. “No shit?”

  “No shit. He’s my half brother.”

  He continued to stare at her. “No one knows?”

  “We didn’t and I know he doesn’t. I’m not sure even your father knows. Only his family does, as far as I can tell.”

  “I’ll be go to hell,” he said, shaking his head. “This is strange. It’s incredible.” He looked up. “So he’s family now?”

  “I guess. It doesn’t feel like that, though. It’s just—well, bizarre. Like finding out I was left on the porch at birth or something. Except I’m not the odd one out here. He is.”

  “Are you going to tell him?”

  She thought about what sort of conversation that would be. “Yes. I’ll tell him.”

  A brief, private smile pulled up the corners of his mouth. “I guess you won’t be dating him anymore. I have to tell you, I’m not sorry about that.”

  “I never dated him. Anyway, Cade isn’t a bad guy,” she protested.

  “Let me tell you something about Cade Lindgren. His interest in you is stronger than you realize. He almost peed on this entire place like it’s his territory when I was around. But he’s like an eighteen-year-old. Still living with his parents at his age?”

  She knew he was right, but she lifted her chin. “He’s just being a good son. Or grandson. Whatever.” She didn’t believe that, but she felt compelled to defend him. “Besides, what makes you such an expert on human nature?”

  His laugh was not one of amusement this time. “Are you kidding? I spent seven years studying it.”

  They were quiet for a moment. Then she said, “I’ll take care of it. I have to.” He gave her a questioning look. “I just do. He deserves to know.” She wasn’t sure how to go about it. The impact it would have on his life would be even more profound than her own, since he’d confessed his feelings for her. No matter how she approached it, it wouldn’t be easy.

  He lifted his hands wide in concession. “Okay, okay. I wish I could be a fly on the wall.”

  Just then, someone knocked on the back door. Upstairs, Jack began barking. When she opened it, she saw Cade. Wow. What timing. Her altruistic determination to reveal his parentage to him stumbled, but she set her jaw and took a breath.

  “Hey, Julianne, I’m back!” He walked in and started to lean forward to kiss her when he saw Mitchell sitting there. “Oh. Tucker,” he acknowledged.

  “Lindgren,” Mitchell returned. “I guess I’ll get to those kitchen drawers. I haven’t seen Jack for a while.” He got up and climbed the stairs to her apartment.

  Cade watched him go. “Was I interrupting something?”

  “No, we were finished. How was El Paso?”

  “My sister ended up going. I needed to hang around and help the folks. They’re getting on and she likes one of us to be there.”

  “Um, uh-huh.” She went to a filing cabinet and pulled the journal out of the back of the drawer. “Sit down, Cade. We need to talk.”

  “Hey, how’s my favorite dog?” Mitchell said when Jack practically launched himself into his arms. He knocked him down onto the sofa and sniffed him all over, as if to make certain he was real. He yipped and barked and licked his face. Mitchell laughed at the squirming, happy mutt. “Is Julianne taking good care of you? It sure looks like it. You’ve been brushed and shampooed. Do you love your new mama? She’s great, isn’t she?” Julianne was right—Jack was a much better name for him. And he’d filled out with good food and good care. “Maybe she could do the same for me, if I had the same chance you got.”

  Suddenly from downstairs, he heard raised voices. He knew he shouldn’t do it, but he wanted to make sure she was all right. He tiptoed to the door and opened it a crack.

  “—didn’t want to marry me, you could just tell me so without making up this bald-faced whopper.”

  “Cade, it’s not a lie. I wouldn’t make up something like this. Look.”

  There was a moment of silence while she must have been showing the journal.

  “It’s bullshit!” Cade said. “I don’t believe it. Do I look like your old man? I never met him.”

  “No, I’m guessing you look like your mother, or someone else on your side of the family. You really ought to talk to them about this.”

  “Talk to them! This would probably put them in their graves! This is a low blow, Julianne. And after all the years I worked for you and took grief from my family about you. They were right. I should have listened to them.”

  “How do you think I feel, to learn this the hard way? But we’re related now, I have family I didn’t know about. Cade, I’m sure you’re upset—”

  “Upset!”

  Mitchell heard a crash and pounded down the stairs, followed by Jack. Swiftly, he took in the scene. The wobbly corner table and a chair were overturned and the coffee airpot lay on the floor, broken. All the coffee things that usually stood next to it—a pitcher of half-and-half, sugar, ceramic mugs—were scattered and shattered. Julianne was chalk-white, Lindgren was as red as a turkey, and Jack started growling at him, the fur along his spine standing on end.

  “Is there a problem down here?”

  Cade didn’t look at him, but pointed in his direction. “You just want to go shack up with him, that ex-con who killed your husband. Fine, you do that. I thought I knew you.”

  Julianne stared at him with her mouth open, clearly insulted.

  “Your bad manners are showing, Lindgren,” Mitchell put in. “Maybe you should tell her how you broke your arm.” He threw it out on a hunch, just a gut feeling he hadn’t shared with Juli.

  “What the hell are you talking about?” Cade asked, rounding on him. “She knows I broke my arm when I was trimming a tree at home.”

  “You broke your arm when you fell off this back porch, spray painting that message on the door with black engine paint.”

  “What?” Julianne demanded.

  “I-I did not! I told you how that happened.”

  Mitchell pressed on, knowing he’d struck a nerve—and the truth. “At first I thought my brother did it. He’s got lots of old cars parked out at the mobile home. Until I found a used spray can of black engine paint while I was stacking the other painting stuff back there.” He nodded at the corner where he’d put the interior paint.

  Julianne whirled to face him. “Cade! Is that true?”

  The muscles in his jaw worked, emphasizing his agitation. “I just—I only wanted to prove to you how much you needed me.”

  Now her cheeks blazed, too. “And that was how you went about it? By trying to scare me half to death? I don’t need any man!”

  “You’re nothing but a slut after all, just like my parents told me.”

  Mitchell, the much taller of the two men, grabbed Cade by the back of his collar and the waistband on the back of his jeans. “Okay, that’ll do. I think I hear your mama calling, Lindgren.
She wants you to go home now because you’re being rude and acting like an asshole. Watch that first step—it’s a doozy.” He steered him toward the back door and put him out on the stoop, then slammed the door and locked it. Outside, they heard him yell a couple more insults before he got into his truck and peeled out.

  “I guess that didn’t go very well,” Mitchell said.

  Julianne let out a big breath, and she put a shaking hand to her throat. “How did you know he was the one who sprayed this door?”

  He shrugged. “I didn’t, at least not for sure. I did find the can of spray paint the other day. But it was a bluff—I wanted to see how he’d react. He didn’t disappoint me.”

  She got a pursed-lip look that he’d seen a lot of lately. “You never mentioned it.”

  “I didn’t say anything to you because I thought you’d just blow me off and tell me again about what a great guy he is.” He bent over to retrieve the coffee pot. “Maybe not so great now, huh?”

  Her pinched expression turned pensive. Then her brows went up as another thought occurred to her. “I wonder if he did any of the other damage around here. I didn’t expect a scene like that. I’m not sure what he was going to do before you came down. I’ve never seen him so angry. His eyes were just, well, black, like there was no other color in them. There’s angry, and then there’s dangerous.” She looked at him. “I’m really glad you were here. And Jack! My wonder dog, Jack!” She crouched beside her “wonder dog,” rubbed his ears and put kisses all over his face. Lucky dog.

  “Do you think he’s gone for good?” he asked.

  “Considering what I told him, I don’t think he’ll want to bother with me again for quite a while.” She seemed very confident.

  He looked out the back window a long moment. “I do.”

  That night, Julianne checked all the locks downstairs and made sure the alarm was set. The scene with Cade had shaken her to her core. She and Mitchell had cleaned up the mess of broken cups and spilled sugar and cream. With the mopping and wall-washing, it had taken nearly an hour. The mild-tempered hired hand had showed her a side to his personality that she didn’t recognize and behavior she never would have suspected. He’d kicked that table with a force that would have launched a beach ball over a house. Cream had sprayed the walls, and the sugar made surfaces glitter. When she tried to imagine what might have happened if she’d been alone with him, it frightened her. She hadn’t been keeping the shotgun as close as she once had—after all, she had trusted Cade and she did trust Mitchell. What a turnabout from a few months ago.

  But besides the scare Cade had given her, she was devastated by his treachery. She had known him for so long. She’d realized he had a crush on her, but she hadn’t grasped the depth of his attachment. It gave her the creeps to discover what a controlling personality he had, and what lengths he’d go to in order to get his own way. She had seen no hint of that until recently, and then today, well.

  The next morning, Julianne came downstairs and opened the back door to let Jack out. On the porch was a bouquet of flowers tied with a stalk of grass.

  “Oh my.” Just as she had so long ago, she looked around as if expecting to see who’d brought them. She saw no one. While she waited for Jack to finish his business, she examined the blooms. These weren’t typical grocery-store flowers. There were sprigs of blue curls, huisache daisies, purple nightshade, and coreopsis. They grew in West Texas, but they were spring flowers. It was too hot for them now. Where had they come from? There was no note in them, but they were so like the flowers Mitchell had left for her long ago.

  Then she remembered. The camera—she could look at the recordings of the last few hours and see if it had been him.

  “Jack, come on.” He came bounding up the steps, and she went inside to look at the images. On her computer monitor, she scrolled through all the images—nothing else had happened last night, fortunately—looking for whoever had left the bouquet. At last, she discovered the right one to confirm her suspicions. The timestamp was 4:30 a.m. It was still dark outside, but the light captured the image of an approaching man. A man she knew well.

  “Mitchell,” she said, shaking her head in wonder. “How did you find these flowers at this time of year?” For a moment she was a girl again, filled with the delicious, forbidden thrill of finding an anonymous bouquet from a totally unexpected and semisecret admirer—the dangerous bad boy of Gila Rock High School, the one all the girls had giggled over. She had wanted to brag to them about her exciting sort-of boyfriend. But of course, that had been impossible, and it had to become a romance to cherish in her heart.

  Then everything had changed.

  Now, through years of betrayal, disappointment, and loneliness, they seemed to have come full circle.

  A search in The Tomb yielded a pretty vase, and she put the bouquet on the glass case where she displayed nicer pieces of jewelry and vanity sets. At nine o’clock, she unlocked the front door to begin the business day.

  Mary Diller had been right about the tourists. She saw faces she’d never seen before, people who talked about driving in from Colorado, Oklahoma, North Dakota, and California. Others flew in to El Paso and rented cars to come over on US 90. Outside, the city had put hanging baskets on the light poles with a drip watering system, and that really dressed things up. Business was better than she’d ever imagined it would be when she’d taken over Uncle Joe’s old wreck of a store. Proudly she’d carried a loan payment to the bank every week since she’d opened for business, to pay it off faster.

  And things were about to improve even more, it seemed. Today, she’d heard a comment that had piqued her interest and imagination. A woman with hair that made Julianne think of Lucille Ball had remarked, “We came over to see the Martha Lights and decided to look around the country a little.” Julianne didn’t correct her mispronunciation; she’d heard it before. “I thought there might be a bed-and-breakfast here, but I couldn’t find one. I’d love to spend more time here, but there aren’t any nice places.”

  So far, no one had even inquired about the farm she was trying to sell. What if the farm began paying for itself? What if . . . ?

  Late that afternoon, when things had quieted down as people went off to dinner, Mitchell came through the front door. “Hey, Julianne. What nice flowers. Where did you get them?”

  She gave him a wry smile. “I double-checked the video from the security camera out back.”

  “I—uh—well, I didn’t realize there was one out there, too. Good thinking.”

  She couldn’t help but laugh. “That doesn’t mean I didn’t like them. Where did you find wildflowers at this time of year?”

  He put on a lofty expression. “I have my ways.” Then he dropped it and reached out to take her hand. This time she let him. “Would you like to have dinner with me tonight? Say at the Paisano Hotel, in Jett’s Grill?”

  Her brows rushed together. “I thought that was supposed to be your date with Cherry.”

  “But I never wanted to go with her. I want to go with you. Beats the vending machines at the Satellite Motel.”

  “I’m sure it does,” she said, smiling again. “Don’t we need reservations?”

  “Done, seven o’clock.”

  She studied his face for a moment. “Mitchell, I suppose it’s none of my business, but I know Jett’s Grill doesn’t have diner prices. How—are you sure you can afford this? I’m not paying you.” The Satellite Motel wasn’t the Ritz-Carlton, but it wasn’t free, either.

  He gave her an even look. “I manage.”

  “Independently wealthy?” she tried to joke.

  Smiling, he replied, “Yeah, that’s it. Can we take your truck?”

  “It isn’t exactly a limousine.”

  “It is compared to the Skylark.”

  Yes, she had to give him that. That old Buick barely had any upholstery left and a faint cloud of exhaust trailed behind it, like an old man. “Okay. Give me an hour?”

  “At your service, ma’am.” His mood
had improved considerably since he’d left the trailer and begun living at the Satellite, even if it was kind of . . . well, “run down” would be a kind way to put it.

  She closed a few minutes early, having earned her sales quota for the day. Things might change by winter; it was hard to say. But they’d probably get the snow birds down here, and that would help.

  She went upstairs and took a shower, shaved her legs—she didn’t want to sound like a cricket when she walked—and hurried through hair and makeup. This was a real treat. She hadn’t been to the Paisano for years. There had never been a reason to go, or anyone to go with. Now, there was Mitchell. No one in town had mentioned their relationship to her face, although she’d expected it. People couldn’t resist a piece of gossip like this. Tough, she thought, spritzing her hair with a light mist of spray. It wasn’t anyone’s business, as much as they liked to think it was.

  Rummaging through her closet, she found a white peasant skirt with a matching top with an elasticized neckline, which she pulled down around her shoulders. After she hooked a pair of hoops in her ears and gave herself a faint whiff of Miss Dior, she was satisfied with the result. She hadn’t been this dressed up since she’d applied for her bank loan, and even then not as nice as this.

  Jack watched her with a look that said, You’re going to leave me here, aren’t you? “Yes, honey, sorry. No dogs in restaurants.”

  When Mitchell came to the door to pick her up, she was pleased to see him in a jacket, bolo tie, and a Western shirt. So far, his wardrobe had consisted of jeans and T-shirts.

  “Mitchell, what a nice surprise,” she said, looking him over.

  “You look pretty special yourself, girl,” he replied, with a frank inspection of her outfit and hair. “Very edible.”

  She laughed. They drove off in her truck, not a stylish vehicle, but clean with no dents and a decent paint job.